Perfect Pitch
by PoorQueequeg
Summary: He never listens to her but Sarah tries not to think too much about that these days.


_Dear All,_

 _Apologies if you are waiting for TrekFic updates from me. I know it's been over a year. I can't make any promises on that front much as I love those stories and characters. They are all so epic that they require time I just can't give them. This is just a little mind vacation for me even though I promised LambsEar I wouldn't write this!_

 _I'm not a Who expert so I can't promise that this will fit canon. While I enjoy most Dr Who, I only really love 4/Sarah Jane. This is just some touchy feely loving squeezins that I scribbled tonight for fun. Spydurwebb, if you're reading - thanks for flying the Sarah Jane/ Four flag! This is for you!_

He doesn't listen.

Sarah listens, reclining in this rather spectacular claw footed bathtub that somehow appeared in the Tardis, in a room down a corridor that one day appeared where previously she was sure there had only been a wall.

Sarah listens as the Doctor plays, today - a fiddle but some days it is another instrument, an Earth instrument or a Gallifreyan instrument or an instrument from another world altogether. Sarah supposes one must have time to become good at all sorts of instruments when you live as long as a TimeLord.

"Perfect pitch, you see," the Doctor had bragged one day as he began to pluck one of Paganini's more obscure Caprices at her. Sarah wasn't sure if he meant TimeLords in general or just himself but Sarah chooses not to think about it too much because she has so many things to think about and she's sure she'll just drive herself insane. She is only Human after all.

There are a few things that Sarah chooses not to think about at all. She chooses not to think about how every now and then they have a conversation about how she's supposed to be going back to London and how he's supposed to have said that's where he's taking her even though the Tardis never seems to quite make it. Sarah chooses not to think about how every now and then they have a screaming row and she tells him he's rude and arrogant and she _demands_ to be taken back to London. He meanwhile _swears,_ on Gallifrey no less, that she's the most irritating, ignorant, mindless creature he's ever encountered and that he's taking her back _at once._

They never seem to make it though. The Doctor blames the TimeLords or the Tardis as they end up somewhere altogether unexpected and all manner of calamity ensues until eventually the pair of them come flying back into the safety of the Tardis and each other's arms.

And then he tells her she's his best friend, his favourite Human, his Sarah Jane and Sarah Jane doesn't exactly choose _not_ think about it, it's just that he's so very good at making her not able to think at all.

Sometimes though, she can't help but think about it. After, lying in his arms, while he drifts between sleeping and waking. It seems some things have the same effect on the male whatever the species. She can't help but think of it then because he'll hold her so tightly and look into her eyes so that she can feel him inside of her even as he _is_ inside of her. In those moments she's so totally his that she can't have any thoughts of her own and when she does manage it her thoughts are usually scattered, erratic, wistful longings of living forever in the Time Vortex. Of never having to go back to her own timeline, of never ever giving him up. And he thinks about that too.

But as he lies there behind her, she digs through thoughts not her own. Fragments, traces, fine gossamer threads of fear, his anguish as it wages war with the loneliness inside of him. His loneliness before her and his anguish now that she's here.

He doesn't want her to die. He doesn't want to be the one that causes it.

Sarah knows that she would know what the problem was if she let herself think about; of a Human and a TimeLord, different species that look alike but are nothing alike save for the few fleeting cosmic moments when their respective planes of existence intersect. It could be a lifetime for her, for him it is the blink of an eye.

But Sarah doesn't think about it. She just enjoys it. And she enjoys him. And the Doctor, well he seems to enjoy her just as much even if the overall effect of the pair of them not thinking about it is that Sarah becomes more and more thoughtless and the Doctor becomes more and more heartless. The simple reason is, you see, if she thought about it, or if he let himself care about it, he'd have to take her home and she would have to let him. And really, neither of them wants that.

And so Sarah chooses not to think about this beautiful bathroom he's dreamt up for her on the Tardis, chooses not to think about how she felt when she realised all that time he spent fiddling with the console while she sulked at him and really, he was programming this. For her, after a throwaway comment she'd made about having a bubble bath by candelight as she raged at him for never listening to her.

Sarah doesn't think about the serenade she gets while she lies back in scented soapy water that never gets cold, the Doctor to her left likewise lazing in a chair while he plays to her. She just lets herself enjoy those moments, not thinking about her short, linear lifetime or the day when she finally ends up back in Croydon.

You see, Sarah isn't really so mindless that she hasn't learned anything from the Doctor. She's learned after all about Time and she knows that there is now a moment that stretches from the very beginning to the very end, a moment that goes on for all eternity in which she, Sarah Jane Smith, is the Doctor's lover.

She turns and crosses her elbows over the edge of the bath and rests her chin on her arms as he finishes his piece.

"Bravo," she tells him and he gives her a little mocking bow. "And timely too," she adds. "I'm turning into a prune."

"Well we can't have that now, can we," he tells her, putting down the fiddle and rising in one elegant gesture. "Here," he says as he approaches, a huge fluffy towel unfurling between his hands. "Let me help you."

Sarah doesn't say anything, simply rises elegantly from the bathwater and lets his eyes wrap around her nude, soapy form for a moment before his hands do likewise with the towel.

No. It's better not to think too much about some things.


End file.
